Email Marketing Pro Blog

January 3, 2012

Why Email Marketing?

With Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, blogs, and instant messaging available, a lot of small businesses and professionals – the complacent ones — question the effectiveness of Email Marketing.

Couldn’t I just post a status update to Facebook instead of sending a marketing email?  Couldn’t I spend that time concentrating on other marketing activities? I get most of my business by word of mouth, through the yellow pages. Who needs it?

Consider the following statistics, from a 2011 study by News Broadcast Network, Inc.

  • 83% of business people check email first every single day
  • 72% check it 6 or more times per day

And consider this: to get an account on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr, what’s the first thing you need? Yep, an email address. Because email is fast, convenient, and green, consumers prefer using email for business correspondence. And, unlike a Twitter account, practically everyone has one.

So, have you you looked in your inbox recently and paid attention to who uses email marketing?

Large companies such as Target, WalMart, Groupon, to name a few.  Sure, they have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts just like you. But, in addition, they use email marketing, they use it often, and they use it well.  Your competitors are also using email marketing, taking the lunch right off your table.

That’s because they understand three marketing essentials that all successful businesseses understand. And I’m not talking about the theoretical 3 P’s of marketing you may have learned in college: product, place, and price. Sure, those are relevant.

What I’m talking about the real 3 P’s:  persistence, persistence, persistence.

Different studies show different statistics, but the general rule of thumb with any business is that the customer must be exposed to your offering at least 7 or 8 times before they will make a decision to purchase.

In addition, the customer learns about your business the same way they learn facts in school.  Our educational system demonstrates that being exposed to knowledge in a variety of forms, over and over again, will reinforce that knowledge to the point that it becomes easily recalled.

So, is it enough that the customer sees your ad in the Google  sponsored links? No.

Is it enough that the customer visits your website and reads about the wonderful products and services you offer? No, but getting warmer.

The fact is, your marketing efforts need to support one another in order to make that final sale.

For example, your potential customer visited the website you worked hard on.  That’s great – money well spent on the web hosting. But what now? Cross your fingers and hope they’re in a buying mood?

An inexpensive, personalized, and proven approach is to capture the email address of your website visitor. Offer them free information, a free gift, an incentive for subscribing to your mailing list. Then, you have on your hands a gold mine.  A formula for getting the customer to your site again and again, without blowing your advertising budget.

The special offer they receive in their inbox may be that 7th or 8th exposure they’ve had to your  business — the one that makes the sale.

Filed under: Email Marketing Articles — admin @ 7:35 am

February 4, 2011

Welcome!

Welcome to the Email Marketing Professional Blog.  Here, you will find:

  • Documented questions (FAQs) about the products
  • Bug tracking and planned enhancements to the products
  • Helpful Email Marketing Articles
  • News about Email Marketing Pro

Please read our disclaimer.

Filed under: News — admin @ 5:09 pm

February 1, 2012

Alternate Settings For ProMail Account

By default, your ProMail account settings use port 587, over a TLS connection. If for some reason port 587 is blocked on your network, you can try these alternate settings:

Port: 2525
Use TLS: Yes or No

Port: 465
Use SSL: Yes

Port: 25
Use TLS: Yes or No
Note: This port is often monitored by hosting companies and is not recommended for email blasts for over 1000 emails per day.

Filed under: Email Marketing Pro,Knowledgebase,Tips & Tricks — admin @ 3:16 pm

January 31, 2012

Mailing List Management 101

You’re excited about marketing your product or service.

So it’s tempting to hit the send button to get your marketing email out there quickly.

Hold on there. Because in the world of email marketing, you have an “email reputation,” just as your business has a reputation that’s spread by word of mouth.

And if your mailing list goes unmanaged, there’s the chance you could get spam complaints from recipients and, worst case, blacklisted by a major ISP or have your business’ email account cancelled.

So to help protect your email reputation, we’ve assembled a few best practices.

Weed Out Your List

People cancel email accounts all the time, as soon as 6 months nowadays. So, it’s important to make sure your email list is up to date and valid. The reason: if you send to a ton of bad email addresses, you look like a spammer.

TIP: You can remove any invalid emails using Email Validator Pro, free with your ProMail Account. Also:

  1. Remove any addresses starting with support@ or webmaster@. The recipients at these addresses can get pretty grumpy about spam.
  2. Segment your list by putting current customers in one group, and leads in another group, for example. This ensures that the recipients are receiving emails relevant to them.
  3. Consider deleting old email addresses altogether.

Run Checks Before a Campaign

It’s a must: check for bounces and unsubscribers before sending out a campaign. Email Marketing Pro automatically scans your incoming email and unsubscribes recipients who have requested to be removed from your list.

Back Up Your Database

Your Email Marketing Pro database contains the subscriber preferences of your mailing list, so make sure to keep it backed up. You can do this under Help > Backup Database.

Strongly Consider Getting a ProMail Account

No, this isn’t just a sales pitch. We truly want our software users to enjoy worry-free mail sending, so we set up an intelligent outgoing mail system just for you.

When you sign up for a ProMail account, our bulk mail servers automatically provide email authentication, feedback loops that detect spam reports, bounce and complaint handling (fact: even the best email marketers get SPAM complaints).

This is fancy talk for: send as many emails as you like, without the worries.

Filed under: Knowledgebase,Tips & Tricks — admin @ 1:43 pm

January 12, 2012

Creating Your Subscribe Form (Updated)

The subscribe form is where your website visitors enter their email address to sign up for your newsletter or other email marketing campaign.  You’ll just need to enter a few pieces of information to create the form. Then copy/paste the code we generate for you to your web page.

The subscribe form creator will prompt you for just a few pieces of information:

  1. Your Email Address — the incoming email address for your email campaigns, the one you have or will specify in Email Marketing Pro’s POP settings
  2. The web address (URL) for a “Thank You” page –  It’s always a good idea to thank the visitor in some way after they subscribe.  The subscribe will be sent here after successfully subscribing to your newsletter.
  3. Optional: First Name, Last Name – these checkboxes will create inputs where the website visitor can enter their first name and last name

The subscribe form consists of a snippet of html code and javascript. You will need to add the html code and javascript to the web page that will display your subscribe form.

How does it all  work?

  1. A visitor to your website enters their email address and information on your web form and clicks the submit button.
  2. Next, our web server sends an email to your campaign email address, the one you entered in step 1, with the word “SUBSCRIBE” in the subject line.
  3. In Email Marketing Pro, run a “Subscribe Check” to detect the subscribe requests and insert the contacts into Email Marketing Pro. The Subscribe Check automatically reads your incoming mail (using the settings your specified as your POP Settings) for the requests.

The subscribe form creation tool is here: http://www.emailmarketingprofessional.com/subscribe/create.php

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Filed under: Email Marketing Articles — admin @ 11:12 am

January 3, 2012

Version History

  • January 3, 2012
    • Fix: subscribe, bounceback sometimes not properly unsubscribing contacts
    • Fix: Notes field could not be imported or used in personalization of email
    • Enhancement: Added Greek and Arabic encoding
    • Fix: Html and HTML source text box sometimes not resizing properly on new/edit message window
    • Fix: HTML Editor would sometimes become readonly on Windows 7 Home edition
    • Enhancement: Added back the Plain Text editor, by request
    • Fix: The “from” address is no longer stored with the message, but taken dynamically from SMTP Settings
    • Enhancement: Moved folder to just ‘EMP’ for all versions, installation will not overwrite.
    • Enhancement: New setup wizard
    • Enhancement : Support for new monthly plan
    • Enhancement: Getting started tutorial to help with first campaign
    • Enhancement: Buttons for subscribe form and premium template
  • May 17, 2011 -  v 2.4
    • Enhancement – Outbox purges messages if a campaign was unsuccessful, prevent
      duplicate emails from being sent
    • Fix – subscribe feature not functioning correctly
    • Enhancement – added email marketing tools under help
    • Enhancement – added ability to add notes about a contact
    • Enhancement – added custom signature
    • Enhancement – added ability to resize the Groups/Mail pane
    • Fix – free and pro versions not working on 64 bit versions of Windows
    • Fix – import errorrs if someone adds ID field & import error if the import file
      has a space in the file name
    • Enhancement – ability to import subscribed field
    • Fix – personlization fiels sometimes added to subject text box instead of email
      body
    • Fix – mail sending could not issue a TLS command
    • Fix – field size of Campaign Result should be 250
    • Enhancement – check that mail queue is properly installed before sending in Small
      Business version
    • Enhacement – database stored in AppData instead of Program Files directory to prevent
      Vista Virtual Store issues
    • Fix – throttle not working when emails are queued
    • Fix – charaset not added to html source of the outgoing message
    • Fix – queue not installed correctly in small business version if the installation
      program could not access queue folders
  • February 26, 2010 – V 2.2
    • Fix – import files with spaces in the file name cause an exception
    • Fix – email queue not installed properly when user account control is activated
    • Fix – send failures report generates an error when undeliverable directory not found
  • October 20, 2009 – Version 2.1
    • Fix – comma separated imports
    • Enhancement – import functions optimized for faster imports of contacts
    • Enhancement – bulk delete operations optimized
    • Enhancement – more robust HTML editor, fixed installation errors with HTML editor
    • Enhancement – added option not to send campaign to recipient more than once
    • Enhancement – more robust reporting (small business version only)
    • Enhancement – mail queue for faster delivery, mutli-threaded send option (small
      business only)
  • March 15, 2009 – Version 2.0
    • Completely rebuilt on .NET platform with improved interface
  • February 28, 2008 – Version 1.0
    • Original application

December 21, 2011

Effective Email Marketing: Netflix Case Study

Of the hundreds of email marketing messages sitting in my inbox this holiday season,  one that definitely got opened was a marketing email from Neflix.  If you’re a Netflix customer, you may have seen it. The subject line reads, “Have an extra DVD rental on us this holiday.”  The subject line stood out, I think, for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that it presented a concise call to action. The strong verb “have” led me to believe, correctly, that if I were to open the email, that I would end up having something of benefit to me. And, it did its job well of creating in me the desire to act: in this case, to open the email.

 I began to wonder if the call to action was a common tactic in email subject lines, and have found in my informal way that it is, in fact, not a comonly used tactic. Most marketers try to make me open their emails by using catchy, cute, or gimmicky subject lines that fail to make me want to act upon anything. Some examples in my inbox are: “Your next vacaction starts today.”  Really, I think, I’m not even packed and certainly haven’t planned to go anywhere anytime soon, much less today. Another: “spend the day brainstorming with me.” No, thanks, that sounds like work and I don’t have time. “Be the first to know about our latest promos and freebies,” reads another. Oh, you expect me to believe that I’ll be the first person to know? Doesn’t inspire me to open the email.

Once I opened the offer from Netflix, I found a simple, short, well-designed coupon with an obvious and easy-to follow call to action. The overall result: I get a free DVD. Netflix retains a loyal customer who certainly will not unsubscribe from their mailing list, if I can get something out of it.

netflix email marketing

Filed under: Email Marketing Articles — admin @ 2:41 pm

December 14, 2011

Error When Opening Queue Manager

Problem: When opening the Queue Manager in Email Marketing Pro Small Business, you receive an error that reads: “Unhandled exception … Retrieving the COM clas factory component with CLSID {2610271F-3EB5-4370-99C7-F0FBFCCAE05F} failed due to the following error: 80040154

Solution: We will need to register a file on the computer that Email Marketing Pro needs to run correctly.  Follow these steps to check for the existence of the file,  open a command interface in Windows and register the file on your computer.

Step 1. Open your Email Marketing Pro program folder. The program folder is:

32 bit Windows:  C:\Program Files\Atlantic Software\Email Marketing Professional 2011 (Small Business version)\ 
64 bit Windows:  C:\Program Files (x86)\Atlantic Software\Email Marketing Professional 2011 (Small Business version\                       

Step 2. Check for a file called SMTPQMgr.dll. If it is NOT there, then download it by clicking here and copy it to the Email Marketing Pro folder.

Step 3:  On Windows Vista and above, open a command prompt as an administrator by typing “cmd” in the Windows search box. Then right-click the program cmd and select “Run As Administrator, as shown below:

Step 4:  In the Command window, type one of the following commands, depending on your version of Windows

64 bit:

regsvr32 “C:\Program Files (x86)\Atlantic Software\Email Marketing Professional 2011 (Small Business Version)\SmtpQMgr.dll” 

32 bit:

regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\Atlantic Software\Email Marketing Professional 2011 (Small Business Version)\SmtpQMgr.dll”

Filed under: Knowledgebase — admin @ 3:25 pm

December 1, 2011

Web Email Account Sending Limits

Important note: This information is intended as a guide only.  Your email account provider can change its email policy at any time without any prior notification.  Check your email account provider’s documentation or ask about the email send rate and bulk email policies, before proceeding with a mass email campaign.

Subscribing to our monthly plan will enable you to use Email Marketing Pro without worrying about send limits.

Google Gmail Email Send Rate Limit & Restrictions
The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a Google Gmail account:

  • Gmail email send limit – no more than 500 recipients per message for the Gmail web interface, or max 100 recipients if you are using an email client software.
  • Gmail other SMTP limits – outgoing messages sent via Google Gmail can not exceed 10Mb per email (including attachments)
  • Google Mail Policy - http://www.google.com/mail/help/program_policies.html
  • Google Mail SMTP restriction expiry method – the restriction is automatically removed within 24 hours after the limit was reached.

MSN Hotmail Email Send Rate Limit & Restrictions
The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a Hotmail account:

  • Hotmail email send limit – no more than 100 recipients per day.
  • Hotmail other SMTP limits – outgoing messages sent via Hotmail can not exceed 10Mb per email (including attachments)

Yahoo Mail – Email Send Rate Limits & Other Email Restrictions
The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a Yahoo Mail account:

  • Yahoo Mail email send limit – no more than 100 emails or recipients per hour
  • Yahoo Mail other SMTP limits – max 10Mb per message for the free Yahoo Mail Service, or 20Mb per message for Yahoo! Mail Plus
  • Yahoo! Anti-Spam Policy - http://docs.yahoo.com/info/guidelines/spam.html
  • Yahoo Mail SMTP restriction expiry method – N/A

Lycos Mail – Email Send Limits & Restrictions
The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a Lycos Mail account:

  • Lycos Mail email send limit – max 25 recipients per message and max 250 emails per day
  • Lycos Mail other SMTP limits – Lycos Mail does not have a limit to the attachment file size at this time.
  • Lycos Email Policy - http://info.lycos.com/legal/mail_terms.html

AOL Email Send (Rate) Limits
AOL imposes a rate limit on an AOL member when a member exceeds the acceptable number of email messages sent in a given time period. The following restrictions apply when sending emails from an AOL connection:

  • AOL email send limit – no more than 100 recipients per message or 500 recipients per connection
  • AOL other SMTP limits – max 16mb per message
  • AOL email-outbound policy - http://postmaster-us.info.aol.com/ipt/
  • AOL SMTP restriction expiry method – N/A
Filed under: Email Marketing Articles — admin @ 4:25 pm

Major Internet Service Provider Sending Limits

This article contains information about the email send limits (rate limit) of most important Internet Service Providers, as we collected from web resources or directly from the support desk of ISPs.  The information is intended as a guide only.

Your ISP can change its outbound email policy at any time without any prior notification.  It is always a good idea to understand your email account provider’s email send rate, before proceeding with a mass email campaign.

For some customers, it is sufficient to use the “throttle” setting in their campaign settings or schedule their email distribution. In addition, you  may have a business class ISP account or be able to work out an arrangement with your ISP.

Subscribing to our monthly plan will enable you to work around these limits.

Verizon Email Send & SMTP Limits

The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a verizon.net email account:

  • Verizon email send limit – no more than 500 emails (recipients) per hour
  • Verizon other SMTP limits – max 2mb per message
  • Verizon email-outbound policy – http://bit.ly/uSWNVx
  • Verizon SMTP restriction expiry method – the restriction is automatically lifted 24 hours after the email send limit was reached.

Comcast Email Send & SMTP Limits
Below you can find the Comcast email send or rate limit for Comcast high speed internet customers. Please note that Comcast can also block port 25 for your connection (triggering the error message: “Error #1: Port25.Secure(SSL); no Socket Error: 10053. Error Number 0x800CC0F”), in order to prevent you (or viruses on your computer) from sending emails using your own SMTP agent.

These limits may not apply to business class customers.

  • Comcast email send limit – no more than 1000 recipients per day
  • Comcast other SMTP limits – max 10mb per message
  • Comcast email-outbound policy – http://bit.ly/ugo8Bk
  • Comcast SMTP restriction expiry method – the restriction is automatically lifted 24 hours after the email send limit was reached.

EarthLink Email Send & SMTP Limits (“SMTP Rate Limiting”)
When you reached your EarthLink email send limit, you will receive the following error message from the EarthLink SMTP server: “error 554: www.earthlink.net/go/bulk – Outbound message limit exceeded”. The following restrictions apply when sending emails from an EarthLink internet connection:

  • EarthLink email send limit – max 1000 recipients per day
  • EarthLink other SMTP limits – N/A
  • EarthLink email-outbound policy – http://bit.ly/rY6Sx1
  • EarthLink SMTP restriction expiry method – A member of EarthLink ‘s Abuse team will investigate the circumstances that led to your SMTP privileges being suspended. If it is deemed that your use was legitimate, then your SMTP privileges will be reactivated within 24 hours.

Cablevision Email Send & SMTP Limits (Optimum – OOL)
Cablevision / Optimum does NOT allow customers to send emails using an email client program or SMTP mail server, unless the customer subscribed to “Optimum Online Boost” or “Optimum Online for Business”.

  • Cablevision/Optimum (OOL) email send limit – maximum 50 recipients at one time
  • Cablevision other SMTP limits – max 20mb per outgoing message
  • Cablevision/Optimum email-outbound policy – http://www.optimum.net/Terms/
  • Cablevision SMTP restriction expiry method – N/A.

Road Runner Email Send & SMTP Limits
If your account has reached the email send limit, you will receive the following error message: “ERROR:5.7.1:550 Outbound Mail Refused – YOUR_IP_ADDRESS”. The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a Road Runner internet connection:

  • Road Runner email send limit – max 1,000 recipients per day per IP
  • Road Runner other SMTP limits – max 5mb per message
  • Road Runner email-outbound policy - http://help.rr.com/HMSFaqs/e_outbound_email_policy.aspx
  • Road Runner SMTP restriction expiry method – the suspension is automatically lifted after 24 hours

Cox Email Send & SMTP Limits
Cox did not publish the official email send limit for Cox High Speed Internet subscribers. According to the Cox web site: “Specific email sending limits are not published because they vary from time to time depending on a variety of factors“. We strongly advise you to contact the Cox support department before sending out large amounts of emails.

AT&T Yahoo! Email Send & SMTP Limits
Please note that, according to the AT&T Yahoo! Membership Agreement, AT&T Yahoo! can assess a charge of $50.00 per day for unintentional violations or $500.00 per day for deliberate violations of their unsolicited email policy. The following restrictions apply when sending emails from an AT&T Yahoo! Internet/email connection:

  • AT&T Yahoo! email send limit – no more than 100 recipients per email message
  • AT&T Yahoo! other SMTP limits – max 20mb per message, max 50 file attachments
  • AT&T Yaho0! email-outbound policy - http://edit.client.yahoo.com/cspcommon/static?page=tos
  • AT&T Yahoo! SMTP restriction expiry method – penalty charges may apply

Charter Email Rate Limits
If you are a Charter Internet access residential customer and you receive the following error message when trying to send emails: “421 Connection Refused – Customer has exceeded the maximum number of messages allowed per hour”, it means your account SMTP access was temporarily blocked. The following restrictions apply when emailing from a Charter connection:

  • Charter email send limit – maximum 50 recipients / emails per hour
  • Charter other SMTP limits – max 10mb per message
  • Charter email-outbound policy - http://www.charter.com/Visitors/Policies.aspx?Policy=6
  • Charter SMTP restriction expiry method – wait an hour to send additional emails or brake up the recipients number into smaller groups.

BellSouth Email Send & Rate Limits
BellSouth does not publish a clear email send limit: “Sending mass, unsolicited e-mail by Service users is prohibited. BellSouth Internet Services reserves the right, in BellSouth’s sole discretion, to determine whether such email constitutes unsolicited messages or transmission. Sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail to a single user, or group of users, commercial or otherwise, by Service users is prohibited.”.

  • BellSouth email send limit – BellSouth’s sole discretion
  • BellSouth other SMTP limits – max 10mb per message
  • BellSouth email-outbound policy - Acceptable Use Policies
  • BellSouth SMTP restriction expiry method – BellSouth Internet Services may immediately terminate any account which it determines, in its sole discretion, is transmitting or is otherwise connected with any ‘spam’ or other unsolicited bulk email. In addition, because damages are often difficult to quantify, if actual damages cannot be reasonably calculated then BellSouth Internet Services may seek liquidated damages of five dollars (US$5.00) for each piece of ‘spam’ or unsolicited bulk email transmitted from or otherwise connected with your account.

Filed under: Email Marketing Articles — admin @ 4:23 pm

November 28, 2011

Backing Up Your Email Marketing Pro Database

It’s a good idea to back up your Email Marketing Pro database periodically. In the event of a hardware failure you do not want to lose your contacts and campaigns. It’s also a good idea to back up before upgrading or re-installing Email Marketing Pro.

Future versions of Email Marketing Pro will have an automatic backup. For now, you will have to back up manually or schedule a task in Windows to do it for you. Backing up your database manually is quick and easy to do.

The first step is to locate the database. The next step is to copy it to your backup folder.

Step 1: Locate the Database

The database is in a file called DBPro.mdb and is located in your application data folder. To access your application data folder, simply type %appdata% in your Windows Search or Run box, accessible by clicking the Windows Start button.  The file locations for the database are as follows:

Email Marketing Pro Professional Version
%appdata%\EMPPro\DBPro.mdb
(usually: C:\Users\[Your UserName]\AppData\Roaming\EMPPro\DBPro.mdb

Email Marketing Pro Small Business Version
%appdata%\EMPSB\DBPro.mdb
(usually: C:\Users\[Your UserName]\AppData\Roaming\EMPSB\DBPro.mdb

Step 2:  Copy to your backup folder

1. Right-click DBPro.mdb. In the shortcut menu, select copy
2. On your back up drive, right-click the folder you want to copy the database into and select Paste.

Filed under: Email Marketing Articles,Knowledgebase — admin @ 7:27 am
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